ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to form a theoretical basis, informed by historical understanding, for linking rights discourse with developments in censorship studies in light of changes in social media. The study of literary censorship addresses is concerned about how the contents of literary material can impact individual readers and society as a whole and about how some of most fundamental human attributes are policed. There are two primary ways that the relationship between literature and freedom of expression has been conceived; despite the fact that both of these ways seem to reflect something of the truth of experience, they are mutually contradictory. First, literary creativity is said to require freedom of expression (censorship will stifle literary production). Second, literature is often viewed as a way to circumvent censorship (censorship promotes literature). Cultural production as a field of discursive endeavor has been a contentious ground for censorship.
